It had a Friend and a Name
by The Velvet Top Hat
Summary: It had a friend once, the Basilisk. Then she was gone and all it was left with were memories and reflections. It spent a long time being angry, so when it was asked and ordered to kill and hunt. It did. Time frame: Founders to Chamber of Secrets.


"The Basilisk is a brilliant green serpent that may reach up to fifty feet in length…If the food source is sufficient (the Basilisk will eat all mammals and birds and most reptiles), the serpent may attain a very great age."

- Newt Scamander, _Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them_, 52nd Edition (London: Obscurus Books: 1919), 3-4.

* * *

There is the assumption that a creature that cannot speak is therefore unintelligent. This is untrue, but widely held.

It remembers.

It remembers a man who spoke to it, fed it and looked after it. A man, who when it came too big for it's home moved it from the light airy place that it had always known, to a dark dank place where it could hear the constant running of water.

It remembers the last words the man ever said to it: "Stay here."

Never again did it hear the voice of that man, but it stayed where it was and ate whatever was stupid enough to enter the place where it was confined, hoping for shelter.

Then she came.

Her, with a voice so similar to the man's, talking in the serpent's own language; it had thought only the man knew it. It looked at her; noticing that the hood on her robe obscured all of her face, save for her mouth.

She spoke to the Basilisk, asked if it was well and received a reply of "I hate water." To which she laughed, then conjuring a wooden chair, she sat down.

Carefully the serpent looked at her, she wore fading black robes and there seemed to be leaves and mud clinging to the edges. It didn't bother to ask her why she was here, it mattered little, as she begin talking.

She told it of all the things that were happening above its head in the castle. Such as the divisions that were rapidly spreading through each of the houses and how she was barely keeping her own together. How her friend had gone missing and all she wanted to know was if she was alright, but had heard nothing and that her mother wouldn't let her go after her. And so on.

Oddly enough the basilisk found the conversation, which was incredibly one sided, to be relaxing. It had missed the sound of a human's voice, it was comforting.

Every day after that she came to talk to the snake, it often wondered why but found that she liked to get her thoughts and the way she was feeling out of her system. It became apparent that she probably didn't have anyone she felt she could talk to and that she was as lonely as the Basilisk felt.

As the years went past, she visited less and less but made sure to come down to the vault at least once a week. Although it missed her, it understood that she had become busier with the school and her house. Her frustration with the other houses was more apparent as well as those who led them. It remembered once incident she spoke of, where they tried to force her house out "voluntarily" and how angry she had become at them and the state they were in.

Then she didn't come one day, nor the day after, or the day after. There was no explanation, no visit from anyone else.

Nothing.

Then one particular day, deep in the vault in the bowels of the school, it felt a shift in the magic which permeated the school. It had always been sensitive to the wards and could feel the more base ones. It now felt a new ward, one that was ever so slightly different from the others in where the power for it had come from and it realised she was gone, feeling her magic in the new ward.

As the years passed, then the centuries, it reflected on their conversations and the things it had been told about life in the building above. The serpent realised it had lost a friend, the only person who had actually cared for it and it doubted that the man had ever cared for it. It became angry, bitter and incredibly lonely.

Then he came.

Another who spoke the snake's language, which took it by surprise. He spoke of removing those who divided the school and caused it problems. The feelings that it had nurtured over the centuries, the anger that it had towards those who lived above for taking its friend meant that it easily fell to his charming words and plans. But again, after all that, he left as well. And it went back into solitude, listening to nothing but the sound of running water and small animals.

Then the ginger haired girl came and the cycle was repeated, the Basilisk channelled its feelings of loneliness and anger back into what was asked of it, again. However it could tell that his voice was behind the orders given to it, but that didn't stop it.

The shock came when it awoke to look for what small mammal had thought this damp, dark place was good place to be and it found the ginger haired girl on the watery floor. Seeing that her eyes weren't open, it slid over and softly nudged her with its nose. She smelt of blood and felt cold to. Nudging her again and this time with more force, it quickly realised she wasn't going to wake. Knowing that it couldn't do anything, it left to look for food but there was a part of it that didn't want to leave her alone on that floor. It felt helpless to see her there, it knew she wasn't at fault, he was and then the stinging realisation that it was too.

So when the boy came, he heard his cries of her name trying to get her to wake in its stone chamber. The snake learnt that her name was Ginny and wished it could have done more.

Then the summons in his voice and it knows it will obey, whether it likes it or not. It liked it at first, and obyed without question; causing pain to those who had been the reason for the loss of its friend, the pain it felt. But not now. It doesn't like it anymore but it will be pulled along by magic, as magic that's used to harm others, has no care who gets hurt.

So when it's ordered to hurt, to kill the boy who cares for Ginny, it has to. But it's shortly blinded by a flash of red and gold plumage plucking at its eyes and it knows that doesn't matter, another way to kill him will be found. So it has to smell him out, this boy, a mere child, following his smell of blood, murky water and fear.

So when that sword forces its way through the roof of its mouth, it knows that it's free from its lonely life, reflecting too much on the past and wallowing in its pain and bitterness.

As it's flailing through the air, glad of its impending death, it remembers her name: _Zenith_. And the name she gave it: _Sirahida_.

And it's happy, knowing that it'll see her again.

* * *

Author's note: I haven't written in a very long time, for some reason this idea wouldn't leave my head and I felt that I had to write it. Hopefully I might start writing again, we shall see. TTFN darlings and thank you for reading.


End file.
